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Well hi there. I have never done a tutorial-type thing before, but I was doing this anyway, so thought some photos and tips might be useful for any other gals (or guys) out there who are also partial to a scalloped hem (who isn’t?).

This is definitely for lazy people. If you want to actually HEM your hem, there are tons of instructions out there to help you do that. Also, if you want to know how to make your scallops even, or measure it out or what-have-you – I can’t help you. I didn’t get out a measuring tape. But if you’re a lazy seamtress and still on board, let’s go!

1. Get a skirt. Preferably an old one. I picked this up at the Rokit vintage store on Brick Lane for two pounds! TWO POUNDS!

2. Get something round. The size of it will determine how big your scallops are, so have a little ponder about that. Turn your skirt inside out, and draw around your round thing (I used the top of a tin) with a pencil. Or, if you’re being fancy (and correct), keep your skirt the right way round and use tailor’s chalk. See if I care…

You can make your circles overlap as much as you want, depending on how deep you want the gaps to be between your scallops. I didn’t measure anything, I just guessed, which to be honest was a risky game, because I had no idea if I was going to end up with half a scallop by the time I’d got round drawing the whole skirt. Luckily, I didn’t! So… yeah, you could measure, or you could live life on the edge like me and just hope for the best.

3. Okay! Now get your machine and set it to a tight zig zag stitch. My machine had length set to 0, and width to 5, because we want the stitches really close. I also made my top thread and bobbin thread the same colour to keep it neat, and also because I was stitching on the wrong side of the skirt remember…

Matching the thread to the material will also do you many favours in masking any less-than-perfect stitching you do. Stitch along all your pencil / chalk lines, all the way round your skirt.

4. We’re almost done! Take some fabric scissors and snip all the way round your skirt, close to the stitching, but not so close you cut a thread. Because then the whole bloody thing will unravel.

5. Wear it! Feel smug that you made a pretty thing with minimal effort.

1. I have spent this week in London, working at the office of the Institute for Public Policy Research, helping them out with the report on the San Francisco green jobs trip I went on in April. I have also spent a lot of time catching up with London-based friends and somehow that has gone hand in hand with some a-may-zing mexican food. Mestizo near Warren St tube and Lupita near Embankment to be exact.

7. Heart-warming to see UK Feminista out in force last night to protest the re-opening of the Playboy club in London. Photo care of @MaeveMckeown who also tweeted this “The london playboy club closed 30 years ago cos it was anachronistic. Why reopen it now? We don’t want this. #effoffhef”

I’ve been trying to ration my magazine consumption lately, but I had to buy the latest issue of Vogue because one of the headline articles is titled “The Arrival of the Asian Supermodels”. Boo yeah! I thought. Take that idealised stereotypes of barbie women! He-llo asian invasion!

But reading the article highlighted two things for me – one is that the rise of Asian models is being almost exclusively driven by the new elite class of mega-rich Chinese. The Chinese market for luxury items has gained so much power that Givenchy showed their Spring 2011 collection using exclusively Asian models, in an attempt to appeal to this “new” demographic (below).

I’m happy that there will be faces that look more like mine peppering the media from now on. I’m glad that being Asian will be seen as simultaneously more ordinary and beautiful. But the fact that this is happening as a result of market forces and greater consumer clout is perturbing me. It’s the translation of money into beauty that ensures greater representation and yet highlights those other ethnicities or “markets” who remain invisible in the western media. Must we wait for economic development before we see beauty?

The second point is one about racism in the fashion industry in general. The first paragraph of the article summarises it perfectly:

Chinese model Li Ai vividly remembers her attempts to break on to the international fashion stage in the early 2000s. Season after season, as she made the London, Paris and Milan circuits, “at most places, casting said, ‘We don’t want an Asian,’ or, ‘We just want one and we already have her.’ I gave up and went home.”

The article also touches on the fact that many of the Asian models being used at the moment have particularly “western” features and do not necessarily conform to what is considered beautiful by Asian societies – “Often Western stylists and photographers mistakenly think they know what makes an Asian beautiful better than Asians themselves.”

I was pleased to be reading an article with these perceptive insights around race in Vogue. That is, until I turned to p.124, where I was confronted with a fashion spread titled “Neo Geisha” with the blurb “With the eyes of the world on Japan, designers are referencing the colours, shapes and forms of its past. The serene beauty of the traditional geisha gets a twenty-first-century remix”.

Over the following ten pages, we see a white model in various states of geisha-inspired dress which include bondage referencing headdresses and some revealing boob shots.

There is so much wrong with this situation I find it hard to know where to begin. But I’ll have a crack at it:

Dear Vogue,

1) Why after an article 60 pages earlier referring to the rise of the Asian supermodel, do you use a white model in a fashion spread that is inspired by Japan?

2) Why do you use no Japanese designers? An excellent way to support Japan while “the eyes of the world” are on it in the wake of the earthquake, might be to celebrate Japanese designers and models.

3) A “geisha” inspired fashion spread is just weird. Geishas, even if they weren’t all “courtesans”, are commonly thought of that way. The geisha motif just perpetuates images of Asian women in the west being “exotic” and sexually available. And the bondage-inspired headdresses? Seriously?

4) You also use the word “oriental” to use an outfit. I would have thought after an article investigating racism against Asian models, you would have thought twice before using a loaded term that recalls colonialism and commodification of Asian culture.

Of Another Fashion is an amazing blog I came across a few weeks ago that documents the “not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of U.S. women of color”. You can see some beautiful, beautiful pictures on the site, as well as fascinating glimpses of social history. I could stare at it all day long. (I do).

1. I went for a scrumptious afternoon tea with my friend Nick on Friday at Metro Deco. It’s like a cafe and an antique shop met and had a baby. My kind of place.

2. Nick and I also went to see Sleigh Bells play this week! I’ve seen them before and they were just as good the second time. However, I think it’s grossly unfair that Alexis Krauss gets to be Alexis Krauss and I don’t get to be Alexis Krauss. I think I am obsessed with her.

3. I have bought a ukelele! And for my first challenge, I am going to learn Umbrella by Rihanna. After I learn how to tune it, that is.

4. It was my Grandma’s birthday this week and I bought her a tub of this Lucas’ Papaw Ointment. I’ve been using it on my lips overnight and it has transformed them from a chapped mess into actual, normal, human lips.

“What is it like being the only black editor, designer, publicist in the room? I recall walking into a luncheon at the Joseph Abboud showroom some years ago. I was the first to arrive, and a white valet waited in anticipation of the guests. I said hello. He nodded but said nothing, and did not offer to take my coat. Within moments, however, a group of white male colleagues arrived, and I watched as the valet immediately jumped into action, checking their coats and bags. I waited, and when it seemed he had no plans to come to my aid, I finally said, “You can take my coat now.” Without comment, he did. Did he think I was a delivery person? The help? Or was he just hopelessly distracted and unprofessional?”

1. My friend Anna just got back from travelling in Mexico and she brought me this present! It is a purse embroidered by Zapatista women, which reads “the women with rebel dignity”. Yeah! I love it. It prompted me to educate myself a bit more on the Zapatistas and I found this:

From the First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle, the Zapatistas presented to the people of Mexico, the government, and the world their Revolutionary Laws on January 8, 1994. One of the laws was the Women’s Revolutionary Law, which stated:

Women, regardless of their race, creed, color or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in any way that their desire and capacity determine.

Women have the right to work and receive a fair salary.

Women have the right to decide the number of children they have and care for.

Women have the right to participate in the matters of the community and have charge if they are free and democratically elected.

Women and their children have the right to Primary Attention in their health and nutrition.

Women have the right to an education.

Women have the right to choose their partner and are not obliged to enter into marriage.

Women have the right to be free of violence from both relatives and strangers.

This isn’t about making anyone feel guilty for liking nice clothes, or even consumerism more generally. It’s about trying to be conscious about the kind of person I am now and the kind of person I’d like to be. It’s about staying true to myself. It’s about letting myself derive pleasure from things that are aesthetically appealing, while rejecting the culture of superficiality that often characterizes communities that value said aesthetics. It is about pleasure for pleasure’s sake in a world where pleasure feels like a privilege. It’s about acknowledging the ways in which aesthetics matter, and the ways in which they don’t, and the ways in which they currently do but probably shouldn’t, and the ways in which they currently don’t but ideally would.

So check it out.

5. Having said that, I am eagerly awaiting these pink brogues I managed to snag off ebay this week! I AM SO EXCITED.

6. Done a lot of work and thinking on green jobs this week, specifically, the East London Green Jobs Action group that I am convening with Otesha. We’re looking at creating pathways in green jobs for young, unemployed people in East London. It’s a challenge, but it’s all kind of coming together, and it’s very exciting thinking about all we could achieve this year. We’re having our next meeting next Tuesday, and I hope to write a longer blog about the project and its direction after that, so more on it soon.